 The Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap Episode 776 from Monday, August 26th, 2019. Welcome to the Mac Observers' Mac Geek Gap, the show where we take all your questions, all your tips, all your cool stuff found. We mix them all together. We form like, I don't know, maybe it's soup today. Maybe it's, you know, we've got lots of stuff to go through. In fact, we've got lots of stuff. There's a lot of acronyms we're going to talk about, like smart and in USB. Maybe it's acronym soup because we've got some cool stuff found. We have some geek challenges. Actually, we have more geek challenges that came in this week than typically come in. So we might have a little bit of a jam session on a few of those to see if we can sort of seed the pot and hopefully get some answers from all of you. Questions for this episode include linode.com.mgg, macsales.com, and ifixit.com.mgg. We will talk about all of those shortly here. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, back in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton. And here in Fairfield, Connecticut, this is John F. Brown. And how are we today, Mr. John F. Brown? I'm doing fantastic, Dave, because I have plugged my things that leaked are now not leaking anymore. And when you think about it, how much of your life is spent plugging leaks, whether they be hydraulic or liquid or data or data leaks? Yeah. And plugging those leaks should give you a good feeling. So I feel very good that I plugged many leaks that I had. Putting a band-aid on is plugging a leak of sorts, too, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes, though, you want your data to leak out, like we're doing with this show, right? No. Like this is intentional leak. And sometimes you want to set up a server that will send your data to people, leak your data to people, as you might say. And that's where our first sponsor, Linode, comes in because they have these all SSD-based servers that sit in the cloud. And that way, they're there on their 40 gigabit network. I mentioned they're all SSD. You can pick from any one of Linode's 10 worldwide data centers. And they're cool because you pay for what you use with hourly billing across all plans and all their add-on services. If you want to leave a server up and running all month, you start with a server that's just their Nanode, which is just five bucks a month. And it's cool. You can get a command line or you can actually have their automated engine set up your server for you with lots of things, like if you want WordPress, boom. You want to set up a VPN? Boom. You're good, right? Like, do you want to set up a Minecraft server? Boom. You just choose that and it auto-selects it all as part of their new cloud manager. We've got to check it out and we've got a deal. Go to linode.com.mgg, that's L-I-N-O-D-E.com.mgg, coupon code MGG2019 gets you $20 in credit. Yes, right away, $20, not $20 after you do something else, $20 right away to start MGG2019. Go do it, enjoy, spin up your server now. Thanks to Linode for sponsoring this episode. We have a lot of things to go through today, John. Should we start with our cool stuff found? Cool stuff's found. I think we say it that way. We should start at the beginning. Well, isn't that what happens by definition though? Don't we get to decide what the beginning is? Well, it depends on your temporal reference. Right. That is fair because time is only a linear construct to our feeble human brains. That's just a thing that we created, I think. No. Yes. Plex. I'm a big fan of using Plex, John, and they just came out with their Plex desktop app for Mac, so now you don't have to use Plex in a browser if you want to use, if you want to view videos from your Mac, which is something I do all the time when I'm traveling. In fact, I was down, I was down sort of near you this week, I went with the girls and we saw the Jonas Brothers down in Connecticut at Mohegan, and we got back to the room after the show and we wanted to watch a movie or whatever, and I was like, oh wait, I can hook up Plex to the TV, which I do with my Mac, HDMI cable with a USB-C dongle, and good to go. This time, I was able to do it with the Plex app, so I didn't have to fight with which browser I was going to use and all that, I just launched the app, it's perfect, so that's, I don't know, it's cool. Use Plex yet? Have you set up Plex? No. Dude. Dude, you even, you have that Synology, that DS918+, you have a new Apple TV, right, that can run the Plex app? Did you get, you got that? You got that new Apple TV, right? Yeah. Yeah, the 4K HD deal? Oh, yeah, so you got to put, you got to, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, dude, but I don't... You know, I got to say, I only really use it as a target for streaming from my computers, I really don't use the built-in apps. I'm pretty much, most of the apps I run are on the Tivo, and I'm okay with that. Oh, so why don't you run Plex on your Tivo? We do that all the time at home. See? I probably should. I know. I do toys. I think I can probably run Plex on my new TV, and I can run Plex on my new Blu-ray player. Oh, that's probably true. So I will tell you, though, the Plex people have said that they, or maybe it was the Tivo people, but whatever, whoever said it, there is a deeper, much deeper integration happening between those two platforms right now. Maybe it's just an app in Tivo, right? Just like Amazon Prime or whatever, you just go and it's there. But unlike Amazon Prime, everything that's in Plex is just in Plex, right? And you have to launch the Plex app on the Tivo, and then you can see it. But they are starting, they are saying that they're working on a deeper integration so that you can have your Plex content sort of exposed to, you know, potentially things in like your My Shows list so that it can pull from that, just like it can pull from a Netflix or a Hulu or whatever there, which is pretty darn cool. So I'm a big fan of Plex, so. Big feeling. All right. I'll love. I want to keep it simple, you know, I'm happy. Plex is soup. That's the... Wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Plex is the simplest way to manage your media library. By far. By far. Yeah. No, it's like it's built for it. Here's what Plex is built for. If you have a big, you know, like your movies and or music or photos or TV shows and or right, you can do them all. Plex is built to make it super simple and streamlined and easy to have all your stuff in one place and just play your content when and where you want to play it. So you want to download to your iPad for an offline viewing. No problem. You want to stream to your TV. No problem. You want to stream to your laptop while you're in a hotel room. No problem. Right. Like, no, no, no. Plex is that. If you want to keep it simple, you use Plex. That's right. OK. Yeah. All right. Right now for that purpose, I use VideoStation from our friends at Synology. But from what I hear you saying, I should consider Plex to give me more flexibility. It is. So VideoStation is like it's a it's I would call it watered down Plex. It's similar. Right. Like so you've got the concept. Right. Like that's what Plex does. But Plex does it so much better. Like there's no VideoStation app for your Mac and even if you wanted to use VideoStation from your Mac, you'd have to worry about like port forwarding and all of that other stuff. No, you just launch Plex. It takes care of it. It knows what to do. Makes life easy. Yeah. That's good. It is a good thing. Well, it's good that they they now have an app. Well, you now have their app. They've had an app for a very long time. Oh, oh, oh, I said, right. I'm rewinding. They now have an app for the Mac. Yes. That is true. I forgot where we were. Do they have an app for Windows? Yes. They do. Yeah. Yeah. So the Mac app is a relatively new thing. As is the Windows app. Yeah. The both both of them. Oh, OK. Yep. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. And and and a good company. So. All right. Next on the cool stuff found list is a lawyer, Jeff said, I found a scan snap competitor with an Android tablet touchscreen appears to be based in Houston called Raven Raven dot com. So if you go to Raven dot com, you can learn all about their they've got their scanners, which has the touchscreen right on it, which might make life a lot easier than having to manage it from somewhere else. And and it obviously would work with the Mac and all that. It's just that the touchscreen on the thing is like an Android. It's Android based, but you know, doesn't really matter. You don't need Android anything else to use it. So we'll we'll put that in the show notes too, because that's what we do. If you ever checked these out, I'd never heard about them before. No, I'm still I have a scan snap. And although it's a somewhat proprietary and that you have to run their app and they as far as I know, don't offer a standards based interface like Twain. Yep. But OK, no, it's good to know there's another option out there. Yeah, for sure. All right. Let's see, Greg. Oh, yeah. You know, we've been talking about opening files on on or opening URLs rather on Mac OS. And Greg sent in this cool stuff found called opener for iOS. And he says it's really handy to use with the share extension. Whenever I come across a link and I want to force it to open in Safari because otherwise the link insists upon opening an app. Or I want to force it to open in an app because sometimes it might open in Safari. I use this. And with the share extension, you can kind of force it to do whichever you want. He says one of the reasons why I do it is in order to filter the reviews for a product on Amazon by typing in keywords you need. And you need to be on the web page to do that. You can't do it in the app. So I use opener to force open Safari. Then I tap the share extension and select opener and select Safari. And that forces it to open as a web page instead of the app. So I'll put that in the I'll put that link in the show notes, too. That's pretty cool. Thanks, Greg. Pretty good, huh? Lots of control over your URLs in the last couple of weeks here on Mac. Yeah, it gets it gets kind of squirrely. To be honest, the whole what's happening underneath the covers there. You want to take this Eric one? I had I had prepped this one for you, but because you love R.C. default app, but no, this is awesome. OK, and actually I had it's on one of my machines here. But, you know, we'll let Eric lead us in here. And Eric says you probably got tons of feedback regarding R.C. default app mentioned in MGG 775. But I thought I'd chime in with Swift default apps. Swift default apps is, as the name implies, written in Swift and is meant to be a replacement to R.C. default app. And he gives us a link where you can find it on GitHub. And we'll put that in our lovingly handcrafted kind of show notes. Well, they're definitely handcrafted. Yeah, we do it all together. Yeah, but I actually stumbled across this a while ago. The thing is, I don't think I moved to again. I have it on one of my machines here, and I think I tried it out. And I'm like, well, it looks the same and it offers the same functionality. But it sounds like, yeah, it's embracing, you know, Apple's new language there. And it's an active development. It like, right. Didn't we decide last week that we found that R.C. default app was last last updated 12 years ago? Correct. Though it still works because the fundamentals of what it's showing you haven't really changed. But but yeah, if if if you're a fan of or you need R.C. default app, then maybe using the the newer the new kit on the block here is may make sense. Yeah, my guess is R.C. default app will not work with Catalina. Like, I just can't imagine that it was built as a 64 bit 12 years ago. No, I don't think that would have been possible. But they say they're a 64 bit app. R.C. default app does. Really? All right. I thought when I went to their page, they said they're. Oh, yeah, you're right. It says it's a universal thing. Go figure. All right. Cool. Maybe, you know, if it's written in Swiss, maybe it's more efficient and takes less memory or whatever. So the nice part about either one of these is they aren't actually they aren't running actively on your Mac. I mean, they're there as a prep pain, right? But they're not once you just are using them to make a change to your settings files like they're not doing anything you couldn't just do with the terminal. And so if they stop functioning, whatever changes they've made or that you've made with them will stick, right? You could make all your changes and uninstall one of these things. And it's all the changes are going to stick. It's not doing anything actively, which is problem. I mean, it's so it's a very simple thing, which is probably why it still works. Yeah, cool. Thanks, Eric. Good stuff. Last week, we also mentioned that I was using this app called Fluid to compartmentalize web apps. And one of the ones that I used to compartmentalize with it is Facebook so that I can have a separate app for Facebook. And more importantly, I can quit that. I don't have to worry about Facebook, you know, chewing up RAM and, you know, some buried browser tab somewhere or something. Well, Ben says, if you weren't using Fluid for Facebook, you might like this menu bar thing called Go for Facebook. It runs in the menu bar and I can press a keyboard shortcut to show or hide its window, which even appears a top full screen apps. So you can have Facebook running all the time in your Max menu bar if you so choose. And it is available. This Go for Facebook app says it's available for free for a limited time. Now, we don't know how long the limits are. It might be limited for, you know, a few decades or it might be limited for a few days. We don't know. But but there you go. So thanks for thanks for the heads up on that, Ben. Good stuff. Amplify, one of the one of the more interesting mesh, a consumer grade mesh solutions that's out there, they are Amplify is ubiquities consumer brand for mesh products. And they do a nice job with things. Well, they just updated their software this week, John, and now Amplify users get a free inbound VPN so that if you're, you know, out and about and you want a VPN into your home network, either to access resources on your network or to tunnel your traffic so that, you know, wherever you are, doesn't get to see it. Amplify now lets you do that for free, which is the same. I think they I'm trying to think. I think Orbi might have that inbound open VPN. Synology definitely has the they've got actually the most robust VPN inbound server that I've ever seen on a router. But but it's nice to see people adding this. You can get VPN with Eero as part of their Eero Plus, but that's not inbound to your network. It's using I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's using the people that used to be cloak. And I can't remember the the current name off the top of my head, John. But but it's nice to see Amplify out that it's good stuff. Any thoughts on any of that, John? The VPNs are good. VPNs are good. I will agree with that. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I realized last week that I recorded the entire episode while connected to ExpressVPN. So I was connected to ExpressVPN. You and I were connected over Discord, and then I was also streaming out to to the world. But, you know, it worked. So I guess that's good. You know, normally, I if I'm doing a VoIP connection, like for a podcast, I would not run through the extra layer of a VPN. But the nice part is I didn't even notice. So I guess that's a good thing. You didn't nobody noticed the show seemed to work fine. So from my hotel room in in Orlando. All right. What? Oh. So we were using yet another different audio setup today. I those of you that were at Mac stock or anybody that sort of paid attention to what was going on from afar knows that we tried to use the new Roadcaster Pro as our mixer for and recording interface for our remote at Mac stock. But the one that we had had some bad had too bad mic inputs on it. Well, I have a new one that doesn't have too bad mic inputs. In fact, it has all good mic inputs. And that's what we're using to mix and record the show today. So if if you notice anything odd about the sound, let us know. Good, bad, just different. That's fine. If you're indifferent, let us know that too. It's fine. Feedback at MacKicab.com would be where you could let us know that. Did you say feedback at MacKicab.com? I did. I said feedback at MacKicab.com. And I will say that having this all in one, as opposed to this, you know, the Frankenstein that I built over the last whatever, 14 years. Well, I mean, I what the Roadcaster does is it has everything you just plug your mic into it. And it's got all of the noise gates and compressors. And it's a mixer. It even has an SD card port where you can have it record, but it can also output to your Mac. It also what's cool is like for you, John, I want to have your audio coming into this mixer so that I can have you in one of the faders on the mixer. So if you're not loud enough or whatever, I can just control you. Well, this mixer has its own USB input so that when I connect the mixer to the Mac, it registers a USB input. I point you to that and now you're there. But what's even cooler is it does what the podcasting industry calls a mix minus. So it sends you a mix of everything minus you so that you're not getting yourself echoed back. And it's just kind of happens automatically right there in it. So which is it's it's pretty cool. It's all in one. Don't the the weirdest part that I'm noticing. And I this is actually the second podcast episode that I recorded with it. I recorded the giggab podcast that I do for musicians earlier today using it. But I hear a hiss in my ears. You don't hear that on the recording. It's not a noisy recording. But even when all the faders are down and nothing is running through it, there's just like a hiss that I hear in my ears. And so I got to figure out what that what that is. It I sort of it goes away. I mean, it it becomes far less noticeable once you start recording and and all of that. But but it is interesting. So but it is fun. It has like you can put I didn't play our theme music through the board. I just played it from the computer. But I could like program the theme music into the boards and it's got pads on it where you can just trigger sounds. In fact, I think if I get it wrong, I hope I don't get it wrong. But I think I have the ability to like trigger applause. Oh, that's laughter. See, they laughed at me because yeah, there you go. So but that's just one of those things you can replace it. Don't worry, we're not going to be adding in those kinds of effects on a regular basis, just demoing here. Yeah, we don't need a laugh track. We don't need a laugh track. Yeah. All right. Well, sometimes you need the sad trombone. So anyway, that's the that's the roadcaster probe. Yeah. Good. Anything else, John? Good. Good. Good. OK. I want to talk about our next sponsor, which is Other World Computing at MacSales.com, you know, oftentimes we'll get like talking points from them about products that they want to talk about or sometimes they'll say, just come up with whatever you want. And today, I actually get to read an email from listener Edward that he wrote and he says, I want to brag about one of your sponsors, Other World Computing says, I realize I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know. I retired from gainful employment a few years back from 100% PC company. As soon as possible, I purchased my first Mac, a refurbished MacBook Air. Later, I handed it down to a family member and bought a new MacBook. It has been really great, but I've always wanted an iMac. It was hard to justify the cost since I do nothing productive anymore. I just tinker. Then I decided to look at OWC and there I purchased a 20 and one and a half inch late 2013 2.7 gigahertz quad core i5 iMac Thunderbolt 16 gigs or DRAM 500 gig SSD. All of that good stuff used, of course, 90 day OWC limited warranty. He was able to get it, I think for like less than 700 bucks. He says this machine looks and works like brand new. It was delivered to my door in three days, awesome service. The 500 gig SSD and 16 gigs of RAM make my nothing really important work really fast. He says, I can now hurry up and do nothing. If you waste time, you should do it really fast too. He says, I just wanted to share the fact that the non-super users also have great options at OWC. They are truly a sponsor that I support and highly recommend. And you hear us say this all the time here on this show, either on episodes that they sponsor or don't. OWC is a company that we trust. It is the first place John and I look whenever we're buying anything to enhance our Macs, but you can also buy it. You can also use OWC for a use Mac. So thank you, Edward, for your email and thank you to OWC at maxsales.com for sponsoring this episode. All right, Mr. Braun, shall we go on to some of these geek challenges that I mentioned earlier today? We're not going to have answers. I mean, we might have answers. Yeah, we might have answers. We might. You never know. All right. So we'll start with Matt here. I love this idea. I think I think I'm sharing this only because I love this idea. He says, I know clipboard managers have come up several times recently, but I have yet to find one that scratches my particular itch and I'm hoping somebody can help. He says, when I was a Windows user, I had a clipboard manager that was very intuitive for him. Control C copied. Control C, again, copied another entry into the stack. We'll come back to that term. Control V pasted the last thing that was copied into the step. And he says the stack and he says it turned the clipboard into what he called the last in first out stack, meaning whatever you copied most recently would be pasted most recently and then removed so that if you copied three things, let's say you copy item number one, item number two, item number three, then you go over to where you want to paste them, you paste it, paste number three, you paste again, it paste number two, you paste again, it paste number one. And he says, but it goes deeper than that. He says, say you've copied 10 things into the clipboard and you want to paste the third item from the last. He says, with this thing that I was using on Windows, I would hold down the control key on the Mac. We would use command if we can find something like this. And I would hit V three times while holding down control. And I could see it scroll through the things in the clipboard and I get to pick the one that I want. He says, I'm looking for something like this on the Mac. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it exists. Honestly, you know what, Matt, I don't know if it exists either. But I like this idea of a clipboard as a stack. Quite frankly, it would be a massive change to my personal workflow to use something like this because I'm used to using my clipboard as a catch all and then happily digging through and finding the thing that I want. I use it really as a piece of mind so that I know I can just copy a bunch of things and they will all always be there for me when I need them. But but I can see the use case. We're using it as a stack like this would be super handy. So if anyone knows, let us know, John, you know, I'm assuming you don't know anything. Not about this particular topic. Well, sorry. Yeah, I should have been a little more should have been a little more specific with my statement. Yeah, but I do like the introduction of the terminology here, which we computer science people like, is that there's LIFO and FIFO. Well, yeah, yeah, right. He talked about a LIFO stack because that's last in and first out. And the way stacks work is you use push to put something on the stack and pop, right, to take it off. So to use it and take it off. So right. Isn't that right? Am I am I remembering my CS terminology correctly? Yeah, but but the nature of the stack can be, yeah, either. The first thing you put in is the first thing you take out of the first thing you put in is the last thing you take out, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. FIFO for first in, first out, LIFO for last in. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Cool. Yeah, I like this idea. It'd be interesting to see if if we can if we can find one. So let us know. You know, we already told you how to email us. If you're a premium listener, email us at premium at macgeekab.com. That we would we would love to we'd love to hear from you there too. All right, John, shall we move on to Mike's Geek Challenge? It's a good one. Yeah, he says at the college where I work, I have a couple of new IMAX that we teach from one of our professors would rather use Windows. So I have the hard drive partitioned and Windows installed with bootcamp. No problem. The thing I would like to do is have an OS selector without having to hold down the alt or option key. It says, I guess that's too hard for this particular professor. Do you know of any way to do this? He says, I used to use ref it back in the day, but I've been reading a lot about it not working anymore. Maybe I can find a version of grub for Darwin grub being the boot of a very popular bootloader used on Linux. So any other ideas? Man, like I feel like there's got to be a way in. I feel like there's an Envy RAM command to set this, John, to always show the bootloader. But, you know, and, oh, yeah, right. Default right. And yeah, yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah, that. Yeah. Yeah, like, like there's boot args, right, where you can you can set all those things. Is there a list? I don't. Yeah, I don't know the answer to this. But I feel like this should be like, because you can set a boot argument to always be in verbose mode or always boot in safe mode or single user mode. But I'm wondering. There's I feel like there's got to be one that's going to always show that that, you know, what he's calling the boot selector or the OS selector, which is what you get when you start up and hold down option immediately. Args, right? Right. So yeah, you would use the Envy RAM command and then boot dash args and set something. But I've looked at a couple of list of, you know, what I would call incomplete list of boot arguments. And I haven't found one yet that shows that, you know, lets you force that that that bootloader. So I don't know, man. Yeah, I found a list, too. I mean, you can go to the terminal and do man and Vram, and it'll give you some information. OK. But I believe there's a command where you can list all the variables. I found an article here and hey, OK, we'll link to it. Yeah, that shows many of them. And actually, one of them is named boot dash args. Well, that's what we're talking about is is setting. Yeah, really showing all of the. Yeah, it's kind of mysterious here. Yeah. And complete list of boot args. I will I will put that in the show notes, but I don't think there's anything in that. That's the that's the one I found is on one on SuperUser.com. But I feel like, man, like there's got to be something close. I wonder if there's another way to hack around it, like could you let's think about this, right? Could you set up an OS that boots by default? That I don't know. I mean, it's not terrible to having having to hold down the key. But but I get the idea here. Well, I think the problem is, you know, if you turn on the computer and forget to hold down the key, then it, you know, boots one way or the other. And yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So Alex in the chat room at MacGygab dot com slash stream says there was something called boot params, but it's no longer supported. So I don't know. Let's see. Yeah, there's there is a boot. Yeah. I don't know. Hopefully somebody will know because I like this stuff. That's, you know, that's why we do this show. Keeps us keeps us honest, keeps us thinking. All right. One from Mark here as we plow through these. Mark asks, he says, I recently got a 3D printer. It's very cool for making some useful items, but it makes a lot of noise for hours or even days while it's doing its printing. My wife made me put it in a far, far away place in our house away from my iMac to get files to it. I've been using a micro SD card and sneaker netting it. The printer does have a USB port on it, but having a USB cable across that distance is not feasible. Is there any such thing as wireless USB and how does it work? I have seen things like this in the past. I mean, so there's a couple of ways to go about this. If there is some generic, you know, plug this wireless dongle into each device and neither one of them knows that it's wireless, but it's actually sending your USB data across a wireless link instead of wired, like that would be cool. And I feel like I've seen those kinds of things. But when I started searching for them today, I couldn't find one at all. Right. So the the next thing is, is this something that could benefit from one of those, you know, network? Let's take your printer and make it into a network printer devices. You know, Landtronics used to make one. There's one built into a lot of routers, right? Because you can plug your printer into your router and then it just magically gets shared on your network, even though it's not a network printer to start because the router is doing it. Or like I said, the Landtronics device, like in his specific case, it doesn't just need to be wireless USB. It just needs to be, can I make my printer work on the network somehow? So like to me, those are the two paths. I feel like path number two might work, but I don't know if his 3D printer, like the way like, is it a normal? It might not be like a normal printer where you're just putting things in the queue and it like it might have some. There might be a whole lot more to it. It might not act like a printer, I guess is what I'm saying. It might be I am controlling a USB device. Not I'm printing to that device over there. So I don't know. What do you think, Mr. Braun? What I think is that a few years ago. I did have a hard drive. I can't remember the vendor right now, but they were using something called UWB, otherwise known as Ultra Wideband Technology. OK, to accomplish a wireless USB connection. Really? Yeah, and I still have the dongle. I don't have the drive anymore because the thing is it didn't really work. It was very sensitive to the orientation of the dongle and where the drive was, is that it either worked great or it didn't. And I actually found and you probably found it ready. But if you didn't, I'll link to this article, but it's a thing on LifeWire. Actually dated May 19th, 2019, saying, hey, you know, Ultra Wideband, one of the things that it can accomplish is wireless USB. Yeah, I don't know how many. I don't know if anybody's actively making. Yeah, I'm not seeing any uses this. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, you probably found the article. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Huh. OK, so you found the article or if not, I'll link to it here. But but that was one proposed solution was using the certain frequency spectrum to accomplish wireless USB. Huh, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, I can like my guess is that they're that this is totally doable and not entirely necessary. Like the use cases for it are not widespread enough that it would be worth someone manufacturing, you know, a generic wireless USB device. Maybe it would, though. I mean, I don't know. It depends on how reliable it is, how how universal it actually is, right? Like if you if you build this thing, is it just the same as buying a USB cable? Is it just as good for, you know, for all the use cases or most of the use cases that would need to happen? Yeah, I mean, this article says that, you know, because the the the rollout of this wasn't entirely successful. OK, they're saying Wi-Fi is probably a better choice. So you get a USB Wi-Fi dongle. I think that that may be. So here's my problem with with this every search that you do or that I've done for a USB Wi-Fi dongle finds the reverse. It's like, oh, you have a laptop and you need Wi-Fi for it. So plug this thing in and you'll get Wi-Fi because it's a USB Wi-Fi dongle, right? I actually want a wireless USB dongle. But good luck telling Google that you don't want the thing that it thinks you want when you put in wireless USB. Like I I'm pretty good searching Google. I could not get Google to filter out all of the, you know, USB Wi-Fi dongles, which is not what what we want, right? You know, we want the other way around. We want USB wireless, not USB to Wi-Fi. So yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, I don't know, man, I think for now I think, you know, you're going to have to run a cable like a caveman. Yeah. Yeah. And I know that's not the answer we want. Well, yeah, or, you know, get is it possible to have like a Raspberry Pi manage this process and put the plug the, you know, the Pi USB into the into the 3D printer and then use that as like the server device. And then, you know, send your instead of sneaker netting your files over with your, you know, with your SD card or whatever, just send it to the Raspberry Pi and have the Raspberry Pi do the, you know, do the thing. Like maybe that's the answer. Oh, yeah. Maybe somebody should do a Kickstarter or something like that on this. Yeah. Again, I like, yeah, maybe right. That would answer the question. Is there enough need? That's you're right. That's the beauty of Kickstarter. Yeah. All right. Anyway. Anyway, one last one. Here, Allison writes in I step menus. If we watch the CPU section on top of seeing the load on the CPU and CPU temperature, we can also watch the CPU clock speed and you need the Intel power gadget installed in order for I step menus to show you that it's the very cool thing to do. She continues, my understanding of how the processors worked in our max was that they have the ability to clock up under higher system load. For example, according to Mac tracker, my 2016 MacBook Pro has a processor speed of 2.7 gigahertz, but a max processor speed of 3.6. I'm asking the question because under high system load, streaming video to the Internet while she records her podcast, my MacBook Pro is actually clocking down to less than 2 gigahertz. It seems I don't understand how this works or something is wrong with my Mac. And she offers even more details in showing some screenshots and all this in our forums at maciecap.com slash forums, and I've got a link to the specific forum post in the show notes for you all. But so the question is, like, why is it clocking down or up? And I think you did some research on this, Mr. Braun. How? I mean, Intel does have an article talking about turbo boost and when it when it should be enabled and when it shouldn't be. Now, one, there's a and I'm going to assume that she checked this out here. But the thing is, it's only supported in a certain class of processors. Right. Well, let's assume that what she said let's take what her statement at face value right that that her her Mac has is, you know, 2.6 turbo boostable or 2.7 turbo turbo boostable up to 3.6. So so check that box. Now, why isn't it doing it? Yeah, well, it could be based on this article talking about turbo boost. It could be that it's not enabled on this machine. I mean, I can't imagine that Apple would screw that up. But maybe they did. I don't know. Are there some weird? Yeah, I don't think. Let's assume no. Right. I mean, it could be. You're right. But but I mean, Apple is is advert like when when sold, this machine was advertised as it supports turbo boost up to 3.6. So again, let's check that box. Like why? What what? How does turbo boost get enabled? What is the like that? So what magic that it and from what from what Intel says, it's totally up to the processor to decide when to do this within the system design parameters. OK, so the the CPU decides on its own like the there's no way that the OS like in software can tell it, yes, go, don't go or. Can it send it? Well, I mean, here's what they say. So they say the processor must be working in the power temperature and specification limits of the thermal design power of the system. Now, could be that for whatever reason, if the power temperature and other things are not within the specs of turbo boost, it's not going to enable it. That makes sense. Like on a on a laptop, if the battery gets below on a Mac laptop, on a bat, if the when the battery gets below for at five percent and lower, the CPU is automatically slowed down to 800 megahertz. Right. So. So, you know, it stands to reason that that that would be one part of it. But I mean, I think she's plugged in while she's doing this. But it could be there's something wrong with her Mac. Right. Like they say here, one of the criteria is that, I mean, the system could be running hot. And if it's running hot, it's not going to enable turbo boost, because it's like, well, you know, I I don't want to overclock and shut your system down. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, maybe get a utility to run your fans a little faster and maybe run your processor a little cooler and maybe it'll kick in. I mean, that's a good idea. Yeah. Oh, yeah, criteria that they use to enable this. So. Right. Maybe that's happening. I mean, you know, it's it's protecting itself. You know, it's not going to it's not going to overclock or, you know, turbo boost if again, it's going to result in because pretty much any processor these days, if it runs too hot, it shuts down because it doesn't want to destroy your computer. Right. Your life. This is a good thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Now, they also have a tool now. Unfortunately, it's not on the Mac, but they do have. I think it's called the Intel Turbo Boost Monitor. Don't only runs under Windows. So I'd be curious. I wonder if you run that in a VM, if you could see some details here, right? Yeah. Right. Again, it makes me sad that they don't have the tool for it. It seems to be only a Windows tool. So. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. But I'm still thinking here. I'm wondering if again, one of the one of the bullet points in their article, they said it's only going to run if you're working within the power temperature and specification limit of the system. And I mean, the guys at Apple are smart. The guys and gals, you know, everybody there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. No matter. You're using the. Yeah. The New England gender, non-specific, yet lately insensitive use of the word guys, which is just people. Right. I get it. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And that's my my interpretation. I mean, I've even seen females, you know, come up to a group and say, hey, guys, sure. OK, that's cool. Yeah. Whatever. But, you know, no, no, everybody. Yeah, you're right. That's interesting. Huh. So I wonder if I may try this. The thing is, I looked at both of my systems here, both my 2012 Mac Pro and my 2014 Mac mini. And looking at the the the I step menus, they both regularly run both above and below the stated frequency of. Yeah. Oh, for sure of the processor that you see in the get info. Yeah, I wonder how long a system could run, you know, above its stated, you know, in turbo boost mode. Like there's got to be a limited time that it, you know, will stay up there and before it backs off. And I'm guessing that's related to heat and power at some level. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So check it out. Visit our forums at Mac.com.com. Slash forums and we'll, like I said, we'll put a link to the specific post right there so you can jump right to Alison's post if you've got some thoughts or or want to see about this. You know, I had suggested maybe she reboot reset SMC because when it's hardware, but it's not hardware. Sometimes it's SMC. She said she had already tried that because she's been listening to Mackie for a long time and she also like really knows her stuff. So no great surprise that she had already tried that. But that's, you know, when you're in a scenario like this, that is a very smart thing to do. So speaking of smart, John. Oh, go ahead. Honestly, I find the whole concept of this technology annoying is like, dude, just run at the clock speed that you advertise. Why do you have like this clock speed and then like like a, you know, bonus clock speed? What, why not just run? Do you really want the answer to that? I mean, you know the answer, right? It's to save power. Right. Right. I mean, like that's the that's why I mean, that's why you'll see your Mac throttle way down when it when it doesn't need the speed so that it's not using all that power. Yeah. Yeah. Because it doesn't need to run. Yeah, but it's like, dude, like a car. It's like, you know, you got this many horsepower. That's it. That's your maximum, right? Well, that's what's happening here. Right. It doesn't. You don't like overclock your engine to get like more horsepower. Right. Some people do. Some people use nitrous, right? Oh, right. OK. Good point. Good point. Yeah. Yeah, when there's a little nitrous for your processor. OK. But it's like built in factory nitrous. Like, you know, it's it's OEM nitrous. I like it. That's good. All right. Speaking of smart, we do have some information from last week on smart. And but first, I want to talk about our next sponsor, which is I fix it. Man, you know, I need to take apart the iMac over in the house because that hard drive in it died and I just need to take it out. And like opening up an iMac with that glass screen and all the little parts that are inside because it's so thin, right? It's flat. It's packed in. I would never feel comfortable doing that if I didn't have the guides that I fix it provides because they are on a mission to make it easier for you to fix your electronics, especially your Mac, right, because they are Mac people like we are. And they've got over 50,000 free repair guides. And if you need them, a huge selection of parts and tools so that they can be your one stop shop for do it yourself repairs. And at I fix it, you'll find everything you need to fix or upgrade your Mac yourself. And you might not know this. But if you listen here, you might already know this, but you can replace the battery in your MacBook Pro, even the Retina models and the MacBook Air and I fix it makes it easy with their all in one fix kits in the kit. You get the part backed by their warranty and high quality tools that are backed for life to top it off. You get the aforementioned really helpful repair guides for free with step by step instructions and amazing photos that really make it easy for you even the first time that you're in. Like when I take apart a computer for the first time, I feel like I know what I'm going to see because you know why I've seen it. I've seen the pictures right there on I fix it and I know what I can do. You've got to check it out to see how easy it is to do this stuff for yourself. And you can visit ifixit.com slash MGG to fix your Mac today and get ten dollars off your next fifty dollar fix. That's right. I fix it.com slash MGG to fix your Mac today and you get ten dollars off your next fifty dollar fix. So go check this out again. I fix it.com slash MGG and our sincere thanks to I fix it for doing all that they do and posting all those great repair guides and of course for sponsoring this episode. It's smart time, Mr. Braun and Chris. No. So in the last episode, we are not so smart time. Well, believe it or not, though, we're going to get smarter time. Correct. Yeah. So in the last episode, we were talking about how Disk Utility on NVMe Macs, at least my 2019 iMac, does not show the smart status. It says that smart is not supported on the internal NVMe drive. Well, Chris writes, he said, you discussed reading smart data and it's true that Apple's Disk Utility doesn't support querying smart data from the drive. But that's probably because it's using outdated smart code. However, if you download a recent recent version of the smart mon tools package, that's the code upon which all of these actual utilities run. Then you'll find that that does support NVMe SSDs. You have to use the command line and you can get smart. We'll put a link to where you can download a bear package of smart mon tools, but you can also install it with Homebrew. Just typing brew space install space smart mon tools as as one word is that third thing and and it'll install it. And then you can just run smart. I think you run smart control and and and it'll your smart control dash a and your disk name and it'll show you. And I ran it on my iMac and it worked great. I also tried something else on my iMac, John. You suggested running Drive DX in the last episode. And I tried that too. Works totally fine. I can see all the smart data on my drive. In fact, because I've installed the Drive DX tools, I can see the smart data on my external drive with Drive DX as well. So that was a good suggestion, my friend. So thank you for well, thank you for that. And thanks to Chris for smart mon tools. That's I love these things. It's fun. Right. And I'm going to toss this into the ring here. But Dave, I've been running this tool for quite a while and it's called smart reporter. OK. And based on what I know, it uses the smart mon tools or it has it embedded within it. And does it have an, do you know if it has a version new enough to to see it on the end? I mean, I can test it, but I don't want to test it right now because, you know, I'm doing this other thing. So, OK, all right, cool. I'll test that now. We'll see where we get. That's good. But no, I like smart mon tool or smart reporter. What it does is that it will also do daily check. So I get an email every day from smart reporter saying, hey, I ran these, you know, I ran the checks and everything looks good, which makes me happy. That's yeah, that's that's a good thing for sure. Yeah, cool. All right. Cool. Thank you, Chris. Good stuff. All right. Where are we here? How where are we on time? Oh, we're doing great on time. This is and we are like pros. I think this new mixer makes this podcast more efficiently. All right, you think? No, I don't think so at all. Patricia writes, she says, in episode 774, Dave, you talked about how much you liked Quicken 2019. I, too, have been a decades long Quicken user, but I've been dragging my feet about upgrading. I'm currently still using the 2007 version on Mojave on my 2013 iMac. I tried upgrading to 2014 or 2015, a few years ago. And for the first time ever, it was a disaster and failed to copy over many of my files. So I reverted to my previous version. My question, could you explain any upgrade problems I might experience and how to avoid them? I understand this newest version is subscription only. So how do you feel about having all your personal finances stored in the cloud and where exactly is Quicken's cloud storage located? I just hate to attempt an upgrade of all my accounts and get caught. So, first of all, you're totally right. Quicken, there was a dark period of for Quicken users and for Quicken themselves, I think, where the software just it sucked. It was not good. That changed in 2017. They they realized this. They understood it. They sort of retooled and re-entrenched and reengaged because they knew there were many of us. And I was one of them who was who were continuing to cobble along with Quicken 2007. And they knew that this was not, you know, a supportable scenario and also not the one that they wanted. So, yeah, with 2017, Quicken got a lot better and and the upgrade process got better. The the software, I mean, it's it's just different software than it was in the middle there. And it truly is like they had cut they had cut features out of Quicken in that 2014, 15 era. I think I don't remember exactly the the the years, but it was bad, like it was just it was not the same thing. And then they had that whole Quicken Essentials detour, which was terrible. Those days are past. So feel free with Quicken 2019. I think you'll be fine. Obviously, keep a copy of your data, you know, back things up. I assume that, you know, because it's a computer, anything could happen, right, with an upgrade. But like I'm a happy camper and I was not trying to use those, you know, intern versions there. In terms of the cloud, you don't have to store all your data in the cloud. Your data is stored locally. You can choose to push your data to the cloud and have it do some management there, but you don't have to do that. So if you're not comfortable with that, you can still, you know, just run Quicken and not have it sync all your data up to the cloud. That that's totally fine. I don't know which cloud they use, but but I do know that the data is, you know, encrypted at rest up there. It is decryptable by them because you can see it on the web. So it has to be. But but if you're not comfortable with that, then you can you can choose. I think you can actually I think it's pretty granular if memory serves. So yeah, I would I would definitely check it out. And my guess is that Quicken 2007 is not going to run under Catalina. Like RC default app might. I'm pretty sure Quicken 2078. So, yeah, indeed. Any any thoughts on that, Mr. Roan? No, never. Never did Quicken. Oh, interesting. What do you use to manage your finances? If you don't mind me asking publicly, which which is kind of Quicken acquired them. Well, it's an Intuit. Yeah. So it's online. Oh, I don't know that I didn't. Is mint an Intuit product or is it a Quicken product? Because Quicken is no longer Quicken divested from Intuit years and years ago. They were they were I think that it was a private equity firm that kind of took them away from from Intuit. So I don't I thought mint was part of Quicken, not part of Intuit. But I could. Oh, no, it's Intuit. It's Intuit. I'm on the page and it says Intuit mint. Yeah, you're totally right. You're totally right. Yeah. That's right. So mint is as far as I can tell, totally online. And you punch in, you know, so you set up an account, you give it your you set up an account with them and then you tell it about your other accounts like bank accounts. And I think it basically logs in. It logs in as you once you give it your password and stuff like that. And then it sucks the transactions down. And gee, wouldn't that be great if it worked with a certain card that we're going to talk about soon, Dave, but it works with all my other cards and all that. That's not the fault of mint. That's the fault of Apple Card not working with any online engine. Yeah. Oh, I know. And and depending on which little bird you listen to, somebody is working on that because that's something a lot of people really want. Oh, yeah, I don't think I don't think that's a secret. I think that's just like I think it was we're going to launch this way and you manage it with your phone. But I mean, it's Goldman Sachs, like other Goldman Sachs cards are accessible by mint and Quicken and everything else. Oh, yeah. My guess is that that that will open. Yeah, I think so. I think so. But I love mint because, yeah, I mean, you know, they have a web interface and iOS app that will give you a proactive alerts. You know, the other day it was like, yeah, your credit score just got dinged because you just got an Apple card. I'm like, oh, man. Right. Yeah. I did a hard pull. And the thing is they detect that, you know, they and, you know, they looked at my score and said, hey, your score that went down, I think by like 14 or 10 or something like that. And it's like, you know, I mean, it's not the end of the world. I'm, you know, like you, I'm still a credit rock star. But yeah, it was upsetting. Yeah, yeah, it'll come back. Yeah, you know, it'll be fine. It doesn't it doesn't take long. I I've had, you know, we bought a couple of cars over the years or whatever. And I mean, at any time you you do one of those, it like drops, but only for a few months. And it just comes because you did a car loan. Correct. Yeah. Well, yeah. And they did a query when they're going to do a zero percent loan, man. If they if they want to finance my purchase, I'm happy to do it. Well, you need to be careful, though, with with car loans because you need to make sure that they're not just baking. I mean, there's all somebody's always going to be making money, right? Like, and that's fine. That's OK. But you just need to make sure that you're not, you know, taking that zero percent loan and then paying an extra, you know, two grand on the back end somewhere else. So just, you know, look out for yourself there. Yeah. Wow, zero percent, though. That's a that's a good rate. Yeah. I wish we could all get that. Right. Well, again, it's usually an incentive for a new car. So, I mean, there's a lot of profit opportunities for new cars. So that, you know, that can just be one of those things where they can add that in as to the deal is sort of a friction free point. And, you know, but there's money made elsewhere, which is fine. I mean, people should make money. It's it's fine. I remember that when when I got my aging. Still current vehicle. That was one thing I was able to negotiate. So Saturn, in addition to a lot of some car salesplaces, do not negotiate on price. A lot of Saturn doesn't exist anymore. So they did not negotiate on price. Right. They didn't. They were like, this is the price for this car, right? But they did negotiate on the financing. That's because when when I sat down with them and they're like, oh, well, you know, let's go through GMAC because it's general motors. And they're like, yeah, here's the interest rate. We'll we'll give you to finance this car. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I just check with my bank and they'll do a car loan for less. And they're like, yeah, hold on. Right. And then, you know, they came back a minute later and like, OK, we'll match that rate. No, that that's that. Yes, every everything is negotiable at it at those points, including like the extended warranty, if you want that and all that stuff. I mean, I know we're getting off the rails here a little bit, but no. But it truly is like, you know, it never hurts to ask. And then the nicer you ask the the greater the chance that the person there is going to want to help you. I always try. I just gave him the fact that's like, look, I can finance through my bank for less than you're offering. So if you'd like the money, I'll give it to you. But, you know, you got to you got to bend a little bit or. Yeah, I just I make of my friend, you know, I have this this philosophy and I do this with when I am the when I am giving customer service to someone and also when I am receiving customer service. And it's I want to be on the same side of the desk as you. Not maybe not like physically, that might be a little uncomfortable on some of those small little finance offices and car dealerships. But but but figuratively, it's let's work on this together. Let's not we're not we're not adversaries here. We are associates here, right? And and one of us is helping the other or in a in a perfect world. We're both helping each other. And and when you do that, especially in that scenario, they're so used to people being adversarial that when you come in and you're like the nice guy and all that, you got to be careful because they're really good at what they're doing. And if you get too comfortable with them, you wind up spending more. But but if you can just be like friendly and and nice and be their partner in this, I've found that you can get people to especially in the finance people generally have a lot of leeway in car dealerships. Oh, yeah. And I was their friend as long as they gave me a competitive rate, which they did. So well, you know, you'll get them to tell the way they were going to be my friend. Right, right. No, and that's the thing is just get them to, you know, just buddy right up with them and you can you can get a lot. And do it with the manager, too. It's it's always, you know, nice guy. It's always a good thing. So anyway, speaking of the Apple Card, Edward has a good piece of advice might even call this a quick tip. I want to make sure we remind any users that are in the Apple upgrade program and have the Apple Card to change your payment method because your Apple Card will get you a 3% daily cash reward for your monthly payments in the Apple upgrade program for your iPhone. Since I just made my first payment to citizens one using the Apple Card and received the 3% reward. So this isn't just for the Apple upgrade program. If you finance through Apple in any way, it seems like this would work because I financed through Apple the phone again, 0% interest. Why not? I'm not part of the upgrade program. But because I because I know I'll keep the phone, but through citizens one change it to Apple and you'll get 3% cash back on that. So that's not a bad little deal. Yeah, I've actually run across somewhat of a tangent to this, but I'm going to offer it because I sure I think it's useful. I was having a back and forth with and you'll see the email trail in our box, David didn't make it into today's discussion. But so one was a question about closing dates and stuff like that and we'll leave that for another time because I haven't yet had that happen. But the thing is the three you got to read always read the details always read all the documentation you get here. Because the other day I was going to buy an Apple gift card. And so I have a local warehouse store BJs and they offer as do many like Costco I think also does. They offer discounts like in my case they offer 5% discount on a apple apple gift card. Sure. So so I get $100. For example, I get $100 apple gift card for 94, whatever. Sure. I was like, Oh, well, you know, let me put it on the apple card because I'll get 3% back. No, careful because if you read their terms and yes, you know this, but I just want to mention this to people. The thing is, the 3% currently only applies to if you buy something in an Apple store apple.com the App Store or iTunes, right? It does not apply if you buy an Apple product like an Apple gift card from someone else. But if you can use Apple pay to pay for that at Best Buy, you get your 2%. Otherwise, you just get 1% Right. And the thing is, I actually use so I have another card where I get 2% back on warehouse stores. So I use that instead. But yes, you're right. But the thing is, they recently announced so now that they rolled the card out. And I think you have yours now. I don't know if you have the physical card yet. So they also, and I think they're going to expand this as to many other cards. So I saw this and I thought that was kind of interesting. So if you do Uber or Uber Eats, you will also get 3%. That's right. Yep. Yeah, no, you're right. Pay attention to the details. It's good. I did want to offer before we move on from the Apple card in last week's episode, we mentioned that the Apple card offers a way of auto paying your minimum balance. That's not true. They have ways of auto paying your entire balance, or auto paying a fixed amount. But currently, there is no way to tell the Apple card to auto pay your minimum balance, which is kind of a drag. Because what I do that with all my other credit cards, and I highly recommend it avoids that helps you to avoid late fees. If you know, I have one day a month where I process all of my my bills and pay everything. And if I'm traveling or something, I might miss a payment like if that gets shifted by a few days, if I'm away, I might miss the, you know, the payment date for my cards. So I just go online and to every one of my cards and say auto pay the minimum balance, you know, five days before the due date, every month, no matter what. And then I can pay the bill. And it's fine. But I know that I have that safety net there that I'm never going to have a late payment, as you know, I'm obsessed with my credit rating. So, you know, this is just one way to protect that and Apple doesn't let me do that, you know, in that way, I hope they change it. So I just wanted to share that with everybody. We do, though, have a lot of we have several questions about Synology disk stations, and we have enough time to finally fit these in to an episode. So I want to do it, Mr. Braun, if that's okay by you. It is I'm going to bring up a link here, though, because I don't think you're going Dave, but I'm actually Synology has regular events throughout the country here, and they're going to be having one in a couple of months in New York City. So yeah, I might make it for that. I don't know. But but yeah, we'll put a we'll put a link to that in the show notes. But it's awesome. I mean, you get to interface with everybody up into including the big cheese, they talk about all their plans for the future, they give away things. And I've actually won a couple of things. So if you can make it into Manhattan. Is it September? I think it is. It is, I think it's anyways, I'll get the link to it. And I'll paste it in the notes here. But um, but yeah, more Synology, we love them. Well, yeah, indeed. So I'll start with Mike. Mike asked sort of a generic question that'll sort of dive us into this. He says, I've got a distation 1513 plus with five WD red drives, two or four gigs and three or three gigs. He says, I'm going to replace two of the three gig drives with a couple of the new six gig drives so as to increase my storage. Do you recommend that I stick with the WD red drives or go with the new C8 iron wolves? I've heard you mention both. And honestly, I, you know, for those of us that are using these at home or in our small offices, I honestly don't think there's that much of a difference in terms of these drives in order to say that one would be better than the other. The iron wolf drives, yes, have the deep and deeper integration, sort of goes beyond smart, which we were talking about earlier, where the iron wolf drives can report far more meaningful information about their status than smart would allow. And the distation can read that. So there is that integration there. And if all else would be equal, I would say, sure, go with that. Because why not, right? You get like it's at the very least, it's fun. You can sort of look and do those iron wolf reports. But right now, looking at six terabyte drives, I am seeing that the six terabyte iron wolf is 170 at Amazon and the six terabyte WD red pro is 195. So I would go with the with the one that's 170 and it so happens that that's the iron wolf. So you get the extra features as a bonus. So yeah, either one, I would not use a non NAS drive in. I would not recommend that you purchase a non NAS drive for your NAS. John, I know you use them. That's fine. I still have a couple of green drives in my in both of my NAS. And they haven't failed yet, but it's not what they were meant for. No, not really designed for NAS. So they're not as they die. I get either. Yeah, right now, I have several iron wolf and like you, I love the integration, you know, the Synology integration, where they can do the extra error and other processing. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. But but yeah, those green drives are just Alex in the chat room is asking why they're they're not built for full time usage, right? In a NAS, it's it's not uncommon for a drive to just be spinning and running and used, you know, 24 seven and those green drives are not meant for that. Also, when those green drives note every hard drive keeps an eye on itself and will take a look and find if it finds a bad sector. There are usually extra sectors that are unused on the drive that are built there or that are kept there for when the drive finds a bad sector, it can remap that to one of these spare sectors. That remapping process on the green drives takes a very long time, so long in fact, that it can start to cause problems with your NAS. Drobo devices are notoriously intolerant, intolerant of that. And they will they will blacklist a drive like you will say, oh, this drive, it went offline for too long. I'm not letting it back on, you know, there's something wrong with it, even though the drive has remapped, right? And it's just that those green drives are not meant to be mission critical. They're not meant to be run full time. And so, you know, it's just how it works. So I would I would definitely put the now I remember the last time I had a green drive fail in one of my Synology. So one Synology, you can set it up to alert you when there's a bad sector or or you can set a threshold. I set it to one. OK, fair. I think makes sense. And the thing is I had one of the green drives fail. At first, it was like, oh, there's one bad sector. And I'm like, all right, that's cool. A couple of days later, it was like, yeah, now there's 500 bad sectors. Yeah. So right. That's the thing. It like cascaded in that it just started going downhill like my dad's got a drive or I have a drive in the disk station that lives at my dad's house. And he backs up to it and, you know, uses it for light duty stuff. And it has had a hundred thirty four bad sectors on it for a very long time. But the number is not changing. And, you know, I saw it when it first happened, it went from like zero to one thirty four. It was like, OK, because I get the monthly disk report from my disk stations wherever they happen to be. And I saw that and I was like, OK, maybe I need to replace it. I didn't get around to it. And I got the next monthly report was like one thirty four. This has been going on for two years now. So, you know, keeping an eye on interesting. Yeah. On the progression of that, really, it's, you know, I mean, I think about it like, you know, drive cancer, it will not get better. It will probably get worse. The only question is, you know, how quickly and there and there is no, you know, there is no way to treat that particular cancer that we're better at it in humans than we are in drives in many cases, but sadly not all. So, right. So, OK, yeah, like in my case, it was like, OK, this is going downhill fast. If it stayed at one, then I'd be like, OK, you're probably good. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, if it just hung at one, that's fine. In fact, your drive is like I said, your drive is built with with spare sectors. So it like an amount of these is OK. It's just, you know, when it starts growing and you can see the rate of growth either, you know, not stop or or increase. That's when it's like, yeah, maybe it's it's not a question of if might the drive in any of my devices will die. It's when, right? So yeah. And I will say this, I have experienced this from time to time where I'll buy, you know, three or four drives all at once, they're all built as part of the same batch. They all tend to fail around the same time often, unless, you know, something odd happens. But when if you've got many drives that you purchased at the same time and you start seeing one fail, start swapping them out because the last thing you want is multiple drives to go offline because then you will lose data. So just bear that in mind. Right. Because that's where even raid will not save you. No, no. If they all roll over at once. If they all roll over. So that's why backup is important. And Scott actually takes us to the to the next phase of this, the next question, our Synology thing says, I'm considering getting the model you have, John, the DS 918 plus. One reason I'm hesitating is cloud backup. I see Synology offers something to backup to a cloud service. However, I don't see a way to use what I already have back please. Is there an easy way to keep the data on the DS 918 plus synced to a drive on my Mac? I pay for back plays on my Mac. So this would allow my back plays backup to keep a copy of items in the cloud as my offsite backup. I asked Synology this question, but they didn't really have a straight answer. So specifically, I'm concerned with photos because I need to move some online version of photo storage so my wife can see all our photos. Currently I'm using aperture, which I know I need to stop using. I have not found the perfect solution, but I need to move to something and I'm thinking that photo station may be good. I think it'll allow me to automatically upload images from both my and my wife's phones so I can manually add photos from our real cameras. The concern, of course, is backups. We'll talk about photo station versus moments in a minute here. But yes, so to answer your question, yes, you can sync the data on your the files on your disk station with your Mac. The software that's that's that does that is Synology Drive. Now Synology Drive is sort of a big umbrella term now that has lots of things underneath it. But one of the main ones is Drive Sync where essentially it runs just like Dropbox. If you're familiar with that where you have a folder or a series of folders on your Mac and you can tell Drive to sync those folders with their you know, their mates that sit over on your disk station. And it works great. I've been using it was called Cloud Station for a while and then they changed the name to Drive a few years ago. And I've been using it for probably almost 10 years now, maybe I mean, certainly more than five as my main storage for my file. So yes, you could do that sync and then have that backed up with Back Place. Also, though, you can use what Synology calls Cloud Sync, which is the same kind of thing except instead of syncing to your Mac, it syncs to a cloud service. And Back Place is an acceptable destination for a Synology Cloud Sync backup. And so that might also be your be the answer for you here. So we'll put a link to both of those in the show notes here. And yeah, Synology, there's a lot of different ways to back things up. And then like you said, you could use Hyper Backup to backup to many different clouds, but but Back Place isn't currently one of them. I backup to Synology C2 cloud, which is there. Oh, okay. Yeah, I thought it was. Okay. So it might have been just there. Yeah, deprecated, I guess you could say, say that again. Like, well, you shouldn't be using Hyper Backup if you can use Drive, right? Oh, no, they they both serve different purposes, I think Drive is for syncing amongst your like from your disk station as the server, if you will, to all your computers. And then Hyper Backup is for the disk station to actually back itself up. And and that Hyper Backup has specific destinations that are options. Cloud sync uses. So Hyper Backup will sync will backup your data as a blob, if you will. Cloud sync will actually sync your files to a cloud. And you can point it at Dropbox or Back Place or lots of others. So there's just a lot of different options. And that's both the benefit and the frustrating part or confused. I don't want to say frustrating, confusing part of having a disk station is there's a lot of different ways to do similar things, but they all kind of certain their own purposes. So yeah. Okay. No, you're right. I'm looking at the list here and it says cloud services. And yeah, Back Place is not there. Right. So yeah, it's not there. Yeah, I think you're right, though. I think it used to be there. I think there used to be a way to backup with Hyper Backup to Back Place, but but not anymore. So all right. Jeff has kind of a he has a big question, but we'll we'll see if we can go through it. He he wants he's curious about setting up a new Synology Disk Station, and he has a lot of individual questions about it. So we'll see how quickly we can go through these and maybe we'll revisit the end of his list in a future episode or maybe we'll get through it. He says number one, I want to replace Dropbox with my own cloud file storage for both my wife and I. And we just talked about that Synology Drive is exactly that. And it's private. It's only stored on, you know, on your Synology or and the other devices that you choose to sync it to, but it's never stored on Synology servers unless you back it up and you can encrypt it or you know, or Dropbox servers or anything like that. So that's that to me, that's the sort of the killer app of the Synology because it's so easy to use and it's something that we all many of us, not all of us, but many of us have been doing with other cloud services like iCloud or Dropbox or Box.net or any of those over the years. So that's that. It says number two, I want to move my Plex server from an old Mac mini that's not running great to my NAS. And and that's pretty straightforward. Migrating your Plex data is very doable if you follow very specific steps. And I went through this recently because I migrated from one disk station to another. And one of the I asked in the Plex forums and one of the Plex employees actually answered with a perfect path to do this. And it was not at all what I expected. And it was very easy. And thankfully I followed that path because otherwise it would have been in fact, I didn't follow that path initially. And I just had to wipe my data and not wipe my original data, but wipe my, you know, the migrated data and start and do the migration again. It's like way better. It's like, oh, this, this is going to take me an extra 30 minutes. I wonder if I can fix it. It's like, no, no, just do the 30 minutes. It's totally fine. Things are much better now. So I will put I will put this link in there. It's about migrating, you know, the the answer was about migrating from one disk station to another, but it's the same Plex data is Plex data. It doesn't matter, you know, where it's living. So OK, as far as the implementation, though, if I'm not mistaken, so if you're going to be doing Plex and especially if you're going to be transcoding video, right, you want you do want to get a Synology like that. So the nine 18 plus has enough yes, well, to do video transcoding, let's be more specific about Oomph because you OK, you well, it's not just CPU speed. It's that the processor in your nine 18 plus has the has a hardware transcoding engine in it. And and that's where the Oomph actually matters, right? It like you can do it with in saw in what they call software transcoding, which is just using the main CPU, but it's way better. Like I I move to the same. I have exactly the same CPU that you do, John. I have the five Bay version, which is the 10 19 plus, but that it that CPU with that that hardware transcoding engine makes Plex like that. My disk station doesn't like heat up or, you know, get bogged down anymore when I'm watching a video that needs to be transcoded. It just plays it because it's because it's got it in there. Yeah, I guess the warning is there are some technology units that may not be up to the task of doing video with peak efficiency. It totally. Yeah. Play. No, you're totally right. In fact, they they do a good job. If you go online to Synology's NAS selector, you can see which ones you know, like like what kind of video it can do in in real time transcoding and all of that stuff. But yeah, you know, a lot of the sort of smaller lower priced 2 Bay units do not have to use your term enough oomph to really get the job done. It's a combination of CPU and of course, RAM. But yeah, no, it's a good. That's a really good point, John. Yep, I agree. I agree. All right. What else do we have here? Let's see. I think his next thing was about time machine. He wants to use time machine for his wife, wife's computer and his computer. Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we were talking about this in, I think, two episodes ago where you you were saying that you back up your time machine destination on your Synology so that you can restore if it gets corrupted. And then I suggested using the snapshots for that. And then like days after I did the snapshots, John, my my laptop's back up corrupted and was like, oh, sweet. And I just like with one flick of the mouse that my my data was restored, it took no time at all. It was brilliant. Wow. Yeah, it's awesome. And the one thing I will say is put all of your put your time machine data on a separate shared volume for each computer. If you're going to use the snapshot thing, because the easiest way to restore a snapshot is to do the whole thing, the whole shared volume. And if you if you have all of your time machine backups in one shared volume, well, then you have to roll them all back as opposed to just being able to roll one back easily. You can roll one back, but it requires like mounting the snapshot and copying it, which takes forever. So if you want to do it fast, have everything in its own little little little. Oh, OK. Yeah. Yeah. My only observation is that setting the whole thing up is still kind of weird. I agree. And that you got to or at least the way that I set it up and the way that I think most they instruct you to is that you set up a separate user or a separate user account and then you allocate a certain amount of space on the drive to represent the time machine volume and you use quotas, which is which is not intuitive, but it makes it makes sense once you do it. And I've I found an article at nine to five Mac where they they walk through this in a very, very clear way. So I'll put a link to that in in our show notes here because yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm still yeah, one of my machines here, I'm actually almost at my quota and the thing is time machine is doing what it should in that it expires the oldest stuff. Right. Now, I could expand the quota, but it's like, do I want to do that or do I want to start from? So think about your yeah. So number one, think about your quota. I think most people would agree that you probably want your time machine volume to be double. The space that you're using on your hard drive. I don't know if you're with me on that. That that's my that's been my guideline for my machines here is that I typically allocate about twice the space of the hard drive to the time machine partition. That's a it is a good rule of thumb to start with. If I have a drive and I like let's say I have a one terabyte drive and I know that I'm only using, you know, 300 gigs on it. I don't necessarily allocate two terabytes. I might allocate, you know, one and a quarter terabytes or something to the time machine just because I don't need to, you know, I don't need my 300 gig backup to be there four times. You know what I'm saying? Like I think more about the amount of data that I'm backing up, not the size of the drive that it's on. I mean, you got to think about both because you might wind up filling that drive at some point down the road. Right. But if you know your usage double, you know, in that case, to put two terabytes out there for 300 gigs of data, that's, you know, it's kind of a lot. But but yeah, yeah. Yeah. And of course, the other thing is, please, please use Time Machine Editor so your machine is not continually backing up, especially if you're on a network connection. But I just found that infuriating. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. You know, I'm going to save. I know we said we'd talk more about photo station and moments. Well, I'll do a quick little bit on it and then maybe there'll be some more questions and we'll talk about it more. Photo station is the old engine that will allow you to manage photos on your disk station. Moments is relatively new. It's it's only a couple of years old. I would use moments. It's way more automated than photo. Photo station was kind of dumb in that it doesn't do any auto like parsing of your photos or anything like that. I mean, I'll do some rudimentary stuff, but moments will look at your photos. It'll identify faces. It will identify, you know, you could say, find me all my photos that I that I've taken of cars or I can say, find me all the photos of John F. Braun and it'll find Mr. John F. Braun and, you know, and it'll auto categorize them and create, you know, albums by month and year and location and all of that stuff. So moment and it all happens on on device on the disk station. So it's not, you know, sending your data to the cloud or anything. So I highly recommend using moments instead of photo station for your photos, which was Jeff's final question here. So I think, though, that's got to that's got to bring us to the the outro here, my friend. It's time. It's time. And I think the band is around. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, it's it's this show has gone on longer than than most have recently. So. But that's OK. It's fun. We're having fun. I was jam packed with all sorts of wonderful ingredients for your soup. You're going on soup. Yes, that's right. Yeah, we talked and we did. We talked about like the my prediction of acronym soup turned out to be right. We talked about a stew. How about stew? I think I'll have stew. Are you having stew? All right. That's a little hardier. Sure. That's right. I think that's what is that the difference between soup and stew? It's one's hardier than I think stew has more meat to it. Or I don't get longer. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. It's a slow cook thing. There's a fast. I don't know. I don't know. I think we should find that out. I you know what? I bet I bet you could search Google for that. You could also we mentioned it many times. So I'll mention it again. You could also just instead of searching Google, you just go to Mackiecom.com slash forums and talk about really whatever you want. That's that's your home. I mean, it's our home, right, for all of us. But it really it is for all of us. It is not just for me and John. It is for all of you to interact not just with us, but with each other and and help each other. And that is exactly what happens there. It's freaking awesome. So you got to check it out. Mackiecom.com slash forums and yeah. Thanks to to all of you for listening. Thanks to you, Mr. John, if problem for for, you know, for like, you know, everything you contributed to it. Like, this is good. It's like, you know, I mean, I know we do this together. It's weird to thank you, but it's like, I'm also very thankful that we get to do this together. No, thank you. See, you're welcome. Yeah, it's it's like we get to do this together. It's pretty good. Pretty lucky. I want to thank our sponsors. As I mentioned, of course, the lino dot com slash M G G Mac sales dot com. I fix it dot com slash M G G Eero dot com slash M G G barebones dot com. Yes, Mr. Braun, you're going to say some. Oh, I thought you were saying something. Oh, no, no. OK, smile. So I'm saying that podcast. But I may be saying something. Would you like to say something? Do you have something to say? And I don't know if you can guess what I'm going to say, Dave, but. I could. I think I can. But I'm not going to share my guess. I'm going to let you if your guess was that I was going to say, don't get caught. You'd be correct. I got it right. Maybe.